On the game live-streaming site Twitch.tv, one user simply known as “TwitchPlaysPokemon” setup a live-stream of Pokemon Red, but with a twist: all game commands, such as “up”,“down”,“left”,“right”,“b”,“a”,“select”, and “start”, would be input by typing the appropriate command into the livestream chat. At first, this seems like a crazy idea: if thousands of people are inputting commands at the same time, could we accomplish anything in the game?

Amusingly, because of the delay between when users say something in chat and when it actually happens on-screen, it became easy to accidentally select the wrong things on menus. As a result, the character seems to compulsively check his item bag—specifically, he keeps trying to select the Helix fossil. You can't do anything with the Helix fossil until you bring it to Cinnabar Island in the games, at which point you can use it to revive Omanyte, an ancient fossil Pokemon. Still, the player "consults" the Helix fossil so much that people joke around about it as if it was a holy deity which the player uses for guidance, and that the real point of the entire thing isn't to beat the Elite Four, but rather to revive the old god, Omanyte.

It could even be that Twitch Plays Pokémon is a bleak-but-perfect summary of the human condition—a group of people unified behind a common cause that struggles and fails to accomplish even the most basic tasks. We ostensibly want the same thing, yet we expend Herculean amounts of effort only to end up right back where we started—at best. And that's the case even without considering the people who are only out for themselves.

In any case, Twitch Plays Pokémon encapsulates the best and worst qualities of our user-driven, novelty-hungry age. Today's Internet has an extraordinary propensity for creating things that (1) grow quickly, virally, and organically through word of mouth, (2) provide hours of entertainment, and (3) waste days of peoples’ lives for no apparent purpose (see also: Flappy Bird).

The Nascar strategy pictured above, which is specific to a particular part of the game, is one of many strategies formulated by folks who are intent on making progress. Here are a couple of other popular strategies and visual arguments relating to game progression that have floated around the web

I have to say, the last two weeks at work have felt like a personal version of Twitch Plays Pokemon, but that's to be expected, given the project I'm currently embroiled in.